5 Questions with Rei Inamoto

Rei Inamoto is the Chief Creative Officer of AKQA and served as the Tomorrow Award’s first Chairman.

Tomorrow: You’ve been a judge at a lot of award shows, what did you find different about Tomorrow Awards?

Rei: The biggest difference is that Tomorrow Awards has no categories. When Ignacio first asked me to Chair the inaugural year for Tomorrow Awards, I accepted on one condition: get rid of the categories.

Tomorrow: The Judges often talk about the “Tomorrow Factor” and everyone has a somewhat different take on it, what do you think it is?

Rei: Something that wasn’t possible five years ago.

Tomorrow: If you could pick one entry from the last round that would have won a 6th award, what would it have been?

Rei: I think it’d have been the interactive music video called “Mirror” for the Japanese band Sour. I felt strongly about that one, not so much about the end product, but the process by which the creators of this work went about. They used Kickstarter to raise the budget and I thought that was such a 21st century thing to do.

We’ll see more and more work being done this way – definitely a high Tomorrow Factor.

Tomorrow: Advertising has been in a state of disruption for years, do you think it will ever go away, or is this the new normal?

Rei: I recently tweeted: “Advertising needs to stop disrupting and start attracting.”

I’m sure disruptive advertising will continue to be around but personally, I despise it. I’d rather create experience and content that people get attracted rather than avoid.

Tomorrow: What gets you excited about the future?

Rei: The fact we have no idea what will happen the day after Tomorrow.